Building Your Kitchen and Garden
The kitchen classroom
The kitchen classroom in the Kitchen Garden Program is a learning space that allows for every child in the class to be hands-on. Consequently there are typically five ‘work stations’ (one for every four to five students plus adult volunteer), each with a stove top with four burners and double-basin sink and ample bench space for preparation. A safe working area of 9 square metres for each workstation is recommended. Not every work station needs an oven. Bench heights are standard-size, as is the equipment. This design ensures every child is always occupied and contributing to their wonderful meal.The emphasis is on creating a warm, friendly home-style environment in which the children can come together with teachers and volunteers to cook and eat. A harvest table, where freshly grown produce can be displayed prominently, is an essential, as is a dining area, ideally within the kitchen, where everyone can sit to share the meal they have created. Round tables seating 8 – 10 people (children and adults together) are ideal.
Laundry, refrigeration and storage facilities also need to be taken into account.
Constructing the kitchen is a very exciting time that requires great management and coordination, and results in a permanent new facility for the school. In Victoria, TAFE institutions have been very supportive of the Program and have assisted many schools in the kitchen building phase. To view a popular and cost-effective prefab kitchen bench system developed by the Foundation, architect Freda Thornton and Holmesglen TAFE see photo gallery. Each school creates its kitchen in their own way, depending upon available space and budget.
Some schools are lucky to have unused classrooms which can be renovated, others have brought new structures on site, re-fitted a multi-purpose room, or set up a shared space for specialist programs (for example the Art & Kitchen Garden classroom at Bittern Primary School). One school transformed the old boys’ toilets. The first step for a school community is to commission a plan for the renovation.
Southmoor Primary School kitchen plan showing 4 work stations
Teesdale Primary School kitchen plan showing 4 work stations
Weeden Heights Primary School kitchen plan shows 5 work stations
Recommended kitchen work station area
Ample bench space, standard bench height and open shelving at Nunawading Primary School
The rustic harvest table is the centrepiece of the kitchen at Findon Primary School
Southmoor Primary School recycled this old piece of timber to create their harvest bench
Sharing around the table is a key component of the Program: at least 20 minutes is allocated to eating and conversation
The old boys’ toilets at Southmoor Primary School before the kitchen renovation
The finished kitchen at Southmoor Primary School
A productive garden
Building the garden often draws in both the internal school community and the broader local community. It needs to begin with a great plan to ensure the end result is a beautiful and productive space for the whole school to enjoy. The vegetable gardens in the schools the Foundation is working with are all producing enough food for anywhere between 60 to 300 children and adults to eat a meal every week, for 40 weeks of the year. Based on a survey of the schools delivering the Kitchen Garden Program we recommend approximately 7 square metres of garden space (4.5 square metres growing space) for every child. So a school with 120 children in the program each week would need approximately 840 square metres of garden space.
There is no reason why additional garden area can’t be established in different locations within the school grounds, however inevitably this has ramifications for class management, water infrastructure and security.
Kitchen Garden gardens need the following: compost bays, water tanks and irrigation, greenhouse/hothouse for raising seedlings, shed, plenty of planting space and rotational beds, orchard area and a class meeting area. There is a great deal of scope for the use of recycled building materials in the garden. In an ideal world the garden will be situated as close to the kitchen as possible.
Children love to be – and can be – part of the building phase in the early days.
Eaglehawk Primary School garden plan
Burwood Heights garden plan
Surfside Primary School’s kitchen garden will feed 120 children every week
At Findon Primary School the kitchen is virtually ‘in’ the garden.
Bittern Primary School shows children can be involved in the construction
The finished beds at Bittern Primary School
Mixed planting – seen here at Bittern Primary School – gives the best results
Eaglehawk Primary garden climbing frame
Compost bays were built as a working bee project at Wendouree Primary School
90,000lt water tanks at Surfside Primary
Recycled building materials – old terracotta pots used as a garden border at Kallista Primary
Mulching to keep the soil moist and warm at Elwood Primary
Bittern Primary use an Adlo hothouse to raise their seedlings
Collingwood College garden shed has a little verandah for wet weather
Kallista Primary School's garden survived the long hot summer, thanks to the wonderful garden volunteers
Teesdale Primary School's garden has many structures built by the children and the community
